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Anybody on this BB see this?

Or is this another report that needs to be run past that great 'neutral' watchdog of all we read and view...Snopes. If it is, have at it, but frankly Snopes is a farce.

Regardless, as I have stated previously, the big loser in the past election campaign is the main stream press. Here's another example of their never ending complicity with the leftists of our nation.

UB

Winning Isn't News

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Iraq: What would happen if the U.S. won a war but the media didn't tell the American public? Apparently, we have to rely on a British newspaper for the news that we've defeated the last remnants of al-Qaida in Iraq .

London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.' A terrorist force that once numbered more than 12,000, with strongholds in the west and central regions of Iraq, has over two years been reduced to a mere 1,200 fighters, backed against the wall in the northern city of Mosul.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering.

We can also thank the leadership of the new general he placed in charge there, David Petraeus, who may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare. And we can thank those serving in our military in Iraq who engaged local Iraqi tribal leaders and convinced them America was their friend and AQI their enemy.

Al-Qaida's loss of the hearts and minds of ordinary Iraqis began in Anbar Province , which had been written off as a basket case, and spread out from there.

Now, in Operation Lion's Roar the Iraqi army and the U.S. 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment is destroying the fraction of terrorists who are left. More than 1,000 AQI operatives have already been apprehended.

Sunday Times reporter Marie Colvin, traveling with Iraqi forces in Mosul, found little AQI presence even in bullet-ridden residential areas that were once insurgency strongholds, and reported that the terrorists have lost control of its Mosul urban base, with what is left of the organization having fled south into the countryside.

Meanwhile, the State Department reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government has achieved 'satisfactory' progress on 15 of the 18 political benchmarks 'a big change for the better from a year ago.'

Things are going so well that Maliki has even for the first time floated the idea of a timetable for withdrawal of American forces. He did so while visiting the United Arab Emirates , which over the weekend announced that it was forgiving almost $7 billion of debt owed by Baghdad, an impressive vote of confidence from a fellow Arab state in the future of a free Iraq.

But where are the headlines and the front-page stories about all this good news? As the Media Research Center pointed out last week, 'the CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and CNN's Anderson Cooper 360 were silent Tuesday night about the benchmarks 'that signaled political progress.'

The war in Iraq has been turned around180 degrees both militarily and politically because the president stuck to his guns. Yet apart from IBD, Fox News Channel and parts of the foreign press, the media don't seem to consider this historic event a big story.

Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country. They are controlled by Liberals who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful response to 9/11!

Last edited by Uncle Bill; 11-26-2008 at 05:58 PM.

When the one you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.

I'm not sure why you are complaining. Time magazine, The Washington Post, the NY Times, and other main stream media have been reporting the almost total defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq since last spring. Unfortunately, one of the most successful strategies has been paying Sunni militia members to oppose extremists and the Maliki administration has been resisting U.S. efforts to get his government to commit to continuing support for these groups.

“I was in my own little world,” the young corporal said. “I wasn’t even aware of a lot of the rounds impacting near my position, because I was concentrating so hard on making sure my rounds were on target.”

After calling for close-air support, the small group of Marines pushed forward and broke the enemies’ spirit as many of them dropped their weapons and fled the battlefield. At the end of the battle, the Marines had reduced an enemy stronghold, killed more than 50 insurgents and wounded several more.

“I didn’t realize how many bad guys there were until we had broken through the enemies’ lines and forced them to retreat. It was roughly 250 insurgents against 30 of us,” the corporal said. “It was a good day for the Marine Corps. We killed a lot of bad guys, and none of our guys were seriously injured.”

Addendum: The reason you haven't seen this on American television or read about it in the American press is simple--journalism is 'dead' in this country.

Have to agree with you there, especially when it comes to the so called Beltway pundits. Some of these guys are just lazy and would rather not fact check their work or they are intellectually dishonest and are trying to push an agenda.

They are controlled by Liberals who would rather see our troops defeated than recognize a successful response to 9/11!

This I disagree with. I see this the same way I see it when people say your anti american when you disagree with the government, or your not patriotic if you don't support the war. The statement is a broad generalization that simply is not based on fact. I think you would be hard pressed, or impossible, to find someone in the media who would not like to see a successful end to this war.

I'm not sure why you are complaining. Time magazine, The Washington Post, the NY Times, and other main stream media have been reporting the almost total defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq since last spring. Unfortunately, one of the most successful strategies has been paying Sunni militia members to oppose extremists and the Maliki administration has been resisting U.S. efforts to get his government to commit to continuing support for these groups.

I think the difference is in the words used. For example:London's Sunday Times called it 'the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.'

The word "victory" is not a word often used in recent times. Surely, not one often associated with the involvement in Iraq. It appears that the U.S. media was more reluctant to use strong words like "victory" either in reporting the facts or in their editorials that focused on the inaccurate intelligence that let to the involvement in Iraq to begin with.

And We can thank President Bush's surge strategy, in which he bucked both Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington by increasing our forces there instead of surrendering. Golly, God forbid that someone in the U.S. media should mention that there was ever anything that GW did right.

Indeed, the issue may be that today's media, even when reporting the facts, tends to put its own "slant" on how it presents the facts. And people do tend to remember the editorials better than the bare-bones facts.

The destruction of al-Qaida in Iraq (AQI) is one of the most unlikely and unforeseen events in the long history of American warfare. I thought there wasn't supposed to be any AQ in Iraq? Everything was in Afghanistan? While emphasis of late has been on Afghanistan's AQ, perhaps there was some merit in hitting AQ where they were more vulnerable & using that as a "demoralization" factor for further pursuit of AQ in Afghanistan? Divide & conquer? Is it possible that success in Iraq with AQ can be useful in doing the same with AQ in Afghanistan?

While Gen. P may believe that purely a "surge" will not solve the AQ problem in Iraq, it could be a matter of combining a similar increase in troops with slightly different strategic methods. When McCain and O debated their difference of opinion on what Gen P recommended for Afghanistan, neither of them went the extra step in explaining what Gen P's different approach might be.

If Gen P may be the foremost expert in the world on counter-insurgency warfare, then I'd guess that he'd have an "approach" to Afghanistan that is appropriate for the situation there. I would not be surprised if that approach entailed both an increase in troop strength there, and other tactical measures that fit the Afghani situation. So, both McCain and O might have been correct in their opinions, but neither gave us enough details of their positions to determine where the real differences were in the General's approach to Afghanistan.

What does amaze me is that the U.S. seems to have learned so little from dealing with counter-insurgency from Viet Nam! They should have been prepared to use what was learned there immediately in Iraq. One of those critical things was in getting the populace "on your side" and how it could be done. The general population wants nothing more than to live and feed their families in relative freedom from harm. Yes, I did know someone who served as a Marine in one of the more successful "pacification" programs in Viet Nam.

G.Clinchy@gmail.com"Know in your heart that all things are possible. We couldn't conceive of a miracle if none ever happened." -Libby Fudim

​I don't use the PM feature, so just email me direct at the address shown above.

I'm not sure why you are complaining. Time magazine, The Washington Post, the NY Times, and other main stream media have been reporting the almost total defeat of Al Qaeda in Iraq since last spring. Unfortunately, one of the most successful strategies has been paying Sunni militia members to oppose extremists and the Maliki administration has been resisting U.S. efforts to get his government to commit to continuing support for these groups.

Only you could refer to the New York Times and Time Magazine as main stream media and believe it.

"The longer you let a dog go in the wrong direction the more they think they are going in the right direction" Don Remien.